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Message: <blockquote data-quote="D_Sinclair" data-source="post: 2568414" data-attributes="member: 21823">First, I want to point out my judgment of Talent Trees Assembled evolved out of comparing it with other talent tree products, primarily 22 Talent Trees, Another 22 Talent Trees, and Martial Avengers. Second, I want to point out that my response is quite long winded.There's nothing wrong with giving advanced and prestige classes special abilities. After all, what are the class features if not special abilities? Problem is in the way they were given. Most authors create very structured classes, "level X gives you ability Y", as has long been the tradition with D&D. However, with the release of the Blood & Guts 1st edition line, it suddenly became "levels X, X+2, X+4, X+6 & X+8 give you a choice of A through M". That's fine and dandy, except for the fact that they identified them as talent trees rather than class abilities. The problem was in identifying them as talents. Inevitably, people equate them with the talents provided by the basic classes. In turn, this results in players, even experienced ones, at least wondering why those talent trees weren't assigned to the basic classes and a few have even demanded they be made available for the only classes that are supposed to have talents, the basic classes. Even RPGObjects has shifted away from genericly calling them talent trees anymore, instead referring to it as "advanced training talents" in Blood & Guts 2, hopefully in order to make it quite clear they aren't meant for the basic characters.That aside, the B&G talent trees were specifically assigned to classes via access to "Special Ops Talents" specified as a class feature, rather than being "accessible to everyone". If they had been made available to everyone capable of taking talents, all it would have done is facilitate some horrible powermongering in the basic classes. Mr. Ronald, with his first RPG credits coming from a Blood & Guts supplement, has choosen to continue the trend he adopted in B&G: In Her Majesty's Service, and rather than at least keeping those talent trees associated with specific classes, I feel he has compounded the problem by genericizing the talents, which consists of nothing more than adding prerequisites to everything, some of which are rather questionable. An example of one of these sometimes quesionable prerequisites comes from the CQB ability. It allows you to fire a gun in a room without incurring AoO's. What precisely does 6 ranks of Disable Device have to do with that? I could understand it as a prerequisite for a later ability in that particular chain, Breaching, where you're bursting into a room with guns blazing, but I don't see how it has anything to do with simply being in a room, shooting at people and avoiding becoming a target.Every other product I've seen that introduced new talent trees has always associated them with an existing or newly introduced class, primarily attaching them to the basic ones. Mr. Ronald failed to do even that, instead declaring in this thread that they are accessible to any class. However, it doesn't actually say anything of the sort inside the product. And he so far isn't at least limiting it to classes that utilize talent trees. Nor does he offer anything in the way of rules or advice on how to add them to other classes as either additional abilities or substitutions for existing class abilities. For example, exactly how am I supposed to make these talent trees available to the Soldier AdC? This product just presents a bunch of talent trees and absolutely nothing to help you get it into play.As I pointed out before, none of the talent trees is really suited to the nature of any of the basic classes. Mr. Ronald's solution, according to his posts here, is "GM discretion" - don't like it, then don't allow it. As a game master, I certainly don't want to have a product like this dumped in my lap by a player, forcing me to develop all the guidelines to use that should have been presented with the book. This means there is a high likelihood that purchasers of previous talent tree products that were actually designed to drop right into the basic classes will be buying this product with the expectation that it will drop right like those other products.In my opinion, this product is seriously flawed because it is unfinished. My disapproval stems entirely from issues the product makes no effort to address. I also doubt I am going to be the only one displeased with it in this fashion. I expect a lot of people who are currently thrilled with the product are going to be very displeased once they try putting it into play.</blockquote>

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